flamecon, july art, & more!
the inaugural issue of kaylee rowena's cool newsletter
hey y'all! this is the first issue of my newsletter. excuse any awkwardness while i'm figuring out how to write a newsletter. it's a process. without further ado, here's some news in a letter.
• conventions •
i'll be at flamecon in nyc on august 20th & 21st (a little under two weeks from now)! i'm tabling with my lovely friend ravi teixeira, and we're gonna have a ton of amazing gay art for you. you can get tickets here and folks 21 and under get in for free on sunday.
flamecon's requiring vaccination & masks, which makes me feel way better about tabling there in the midst of, y'know, everything. flamecon is my favorite con i've ever tabled (and was my first big convention way back in 2018), and this year will be my third year tabling there! i'm super excited. it's gonna be great.
i'll have a ton of cool stuff, including copies of haunts, the scent of may rain, and a bunch of zines, stickers (including my new tarot stickers, which i absolutely adore), prints, and, of course, lots of haunted houses.
here's a map so you can find us!
i'll also be at small press expo in maryland next month, september 17th & 18th. i'll tell y'all more about that when it gets closer to then.
• recent art •
i've been working on a lot of comics stuff i can't show you guys just yet — so you're gonna have to take my word for it when i say it's really good and i'm really excited about how it's turning out, okay? here's some stuff i can talk about instead.
house at the end of everything
i had the absolute honor of making a poster for one of my fave internet people, jacob geller! if you enjoy my haunted house content at all, you should be watching his videos. my favorite is "control, anatomy, and the legacy of the haunted house", fairly predictably, but every single one of his video essays is an absolute banger and completely change the way i think about things.
you can preorder a fancy 18x24 of this on jacob's merch store!
deck of spirits
i made some tarot cards (with made-up suits/card types) for my patreon last month! and i printed them as stickers. i really like how they turned out; it's making me want to do a full tarot deck at some point. you can get prints of this over on my inprnt; i think they look real neat.
artfight
i did artfight for the first time last month! for those who don't know, artfight is a yearly art trading game where you draw other people's original characters to earn points for your team. i didn't have time to do as much as i was hoping to do, but it was still a lot of fun (and i got some really cool art of my characters as well!) here's a couple of my fave drawings i did for it.
odetta lee for andy
petra wagner for juice
tilly wilde for zombie
fia for my roommate irene
• misc. updates •
i'm moving back to baltimore next month! things might be kind of slow as i sort out moving to a new city. i've lived in nyc for my entire adult life so far (with the exception of one study abroad semester in rome) so it's scary and exciting to be going somewhere else, but i'm hoping the money saved on rent will mean that i can focus more on the art i want to be making. we'll see!
i also have some real fun collaborations on the horizon, so stay tuned for more about that soon.
• recommendations •
here's a few things i've been enjoying lately, in no particular order.
podcasts: cool people who did cool stuff with margaret killjoy; old gods of appalachia; friends at the table
books: i'm reading plain bad heroines right now and it's absolutely captivating! i also recently finished the only good indians which was incredible.
movies: i saw nope, jordan peele's newest movie, last week and have not stopped thinking about it for even a second since then
tv: i've been rewatching leverage and i truly don't understand why everyone isn't constantly talking about this show all the time. it's so good. if you want a show that's explicitly anticapitalist featuring found family and heists, go watch it. also, the new season of what we do in the shadows!
misc: i started a little jar where i can write down good things that happen and stick them in the jar to look at later. it was a very good idea. i also have a little basil plant that's been growing taller and i'm very proud of her!
thanks for reading! this was kinda a long one; future editions probably won't be quite as long. or maybe they will. who knows!
i hope you're doing well & taking care of yourself! have a lovely day, and i'll talk to y'all soon.
— kaylee